SOURCES AND SOME GENERAL INFORMATION ON MEDIEVAL
SCANDINAVIA

Tamsin Hekala

One of the joys of working in the field of Medieval Scandinavia is the
abundance and availability of source material. There are stories, public
documents, and early histories. The interest in Medieval Scandinavia,
particularly the Vikings, has been fairly constant since the
mid-nineteenth century. That interest was the result of several strong
trends: nationalism, imperialism, and romanticism. Those trends created
an interest in publishing the primary documents of the past. Some
dismiss the older scholarship of the nineteenth century as irrelevant. This
attitude severely limits the scholar since the definitive published sources
are often the products of meticulous nineteenth-century scholarship. The
published primary sources are not easy reading. As scholarly tools they
duplicate the inconsistencies and difficulties of the original manuscript.
The spelling is not normalized, the text annotated with supplied endings or
words, and the discussion is couched in a formal scholarly style that
makes quick perusal impossible. Detailed provenance for each existing
manuscript and a complete description of the physical condition of the
manuscript is usually included. The two areas that were made easier by
the publication of sources were clarity of text (print is usually easier to
read than a handwritten document) and availability.

The published primary public documents and annals have by and large
not been redone since their original publication date. So the definitive
dictionaries, diplomataria, annals, and most of the law codes have only
been reissued every so many years. The literature has, because of its
relative simplicity, been redone in newer definitive editions. For the saga
material the series is Islenzk Fornrit. There the more popular and better
known sagas are available in Icelandic along with current scholarly
comment, also in Icelandic. The sagas also have many translations in
many languages. Although the Penguin series is not the most precise
edition, it is the most available and least expensive.

For those interested in law, the Icelandic law code Gragas has been
translated into English, German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Of
the laws from the rest of Northern Europe, translations have been spotty.
Norway's Frostathing and Gulathing are translated, some of the Germanic
law codes have been translated by Katherine Fischer Drew, and the codes
from England, Ireland, and Wales have been translated. For the rest, they
are difficult to find but well worth the search.

What follows is a basic list of material for those starting out in search
of information. A few of the greater sagas are listed so that one may see
what is typical in the publishing pattern, but others are available. If a
work is not in English the language of the work is listed after. A final
section on general reference material that is useful is provided at the end.
Further sections on secondary works will follow at a later date.

PRIMARY SOURCES: ORIGINAL LANGUAGE, DUAL TEXT, & DEFINITIVE
EDITIONS

Corpus iuris sueo-gotorum antiqui . D. H. S. Collin, and. C. J.
Schlyter, eds. 13 vols. Stockholm: Z.Haeggstrom, 1827-1877. (Text is
Old Swedish, not normalized. Footnotes are dual text in Swedish and
Latin. Difficult to find the entire series. There are a few of the first
volumes which have been reissued.)

Origines islandicae: A Collection of the more Important Sagas and
other Native Writings Relating to the Settlement and Early History of
Iceland. 2 Vols. Gudbrand Vigfusson,and F. York Powell, eds.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. (Dual text Old Icelandic unnormalized
and English translation, comment, and footnotes. Has good provenance
for each document.)

PRIMARY SOURCES: TRANSLATED

Dennis, Andrew, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, trans. Laws of
Early Iceland, Gragas: The Codex Regius of Gragas with Material from
other Manuscripts. 2 vols. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
1993. (English translation of text recension version of Gragas. First
volume was published in 1980.)

Dasent, George Webbe, trans. The Story of Burnt Njal or Life in
Iceland at the end of the Tenth Century. From the Icelandic of Njal's
Saga. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1861.

Islandisches Recht: die Graugans. Translated by Andreas
Heusler. Weimar: 1937. (German translation of Gragas by premier
German scholar of the early 20th century. Interesting insights but the text
is fraktor.)

Larson, Laurence, trans. The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the
Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law. Records of Civilization
Sources and Studies, no. 20. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.
(A solid translation of the first two-thirds of the first volume of Norges
gamle love intil 1387. Text can be placed side by side with Munch and
Keyser's original.)

Larusson, Bjorn. The Old Icelandic Land Registers. Translated
by W. F. Salisbury. Lund: Berlingska Boktrycheriet,1967. (A later source
but provides good example of economic source materials.)

Pulsiano, Phillip, ed. Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia.
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993. (New work and very nice.
Provides current information about the field in English for both specialist
and beginner.)

Seeberg, Elizabeth S. English-Norwegian - Norwegian-English
Dictionary of Archaeology. 2nd ed. Oslo: University of Oslo Press,
1993. (Useful since half of the information about the Vikings is
archaeological. Provides a good tool for those not conversant with
archaeological terminology.)